Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Disney World's awful Tiki Room catches fire

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 10:56 PM PST

Walt Disney World's Enchanted Tiki Room has shut down after sprinklers extinguished a fire in its attic last night. It's hard to contain my schadenfreude here: the Disney World version of the Tiki Room (the watershed in audio-animatronics and lineal ancestor of all contemporary themepark robots) was gutted in 1998 and replaced with an indescribably awful, unfunny update featuring the Lion King's Zazu and Aladdin's Iago. I took my two-year-old daughter to the Tiki Room last week and within seconds, she was whimpering and saying, "These are the bad tikis. Don't like them. Where are the real birds?"

In my secret heart, I hope that there's some kind of serious barrier to immediately reopening the Tiki Room and that the refractory period is hijacked by bold Imagineers who come up with something that honors the original show.

For the record, the Tiki Room in Disneyland California is very faithful to the original and remains one of my favorite theme-park attractions of all time.

Fire Reported at Magic Kingdom Tiki Room

(Image: The Enchanted Tiki Room, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from disneyworldsecets's photostream)

 


Interview with hacker anthropologist Biella Coleman

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 10:48 PM PST

In this week's show, Thomas Gideon's Command Line podcast interviews NYU professor Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist who studies hackers, trolls, 4chan and other online phenomena. I met Biella when she was doing fieldwork for her PhD by hanging around EFF and the hackers in its orbit, and I've met very few social scientists with a better understanding of how online dynamics work.
The feature this week is an interview I conducted with Gabriella Coleman. I was introduced to her work through her writings at The Atlantic. She mentions Malcom Gladwell's criticism of online activism and Indy Media. The main reason I invited her on was her critique of Bruce Sterling's The Blast Shack. We delve a bit further into the question of WikiLeaks lasting impacts. I mention a couple of times Clay Shirky's long haul view. Gabriella recommends Adrian Johns' book on piracy (which I ordered with a gift card I received recently, can't wait to read it). She also mentions a revisit of the topic of WikiLeaks at The Economist. You can also find Gabriella on Twitter where she is quite active and sharing some great links related to topics we discuss in this interview and of course her broader work.
TCLP 2011-01-12 Interview: Gabriella Coleman

MP3 Link

(Image: Biella Coleman, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from sfllaw's photostream)

 


PrimoGraf: laser-cut hyper-Spirograph

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 10:42 PM PST

LeafPDX's PrimoGraf is a $150, laser-cut hyper-Spirograph-like device that makes extremely lovely, intense geometric doodles in infinite variety.

The PrimoGraf is a hand cranked drawing machine. Using wooden gears with prime number based gears an infinite array of drawings can be made. It comes complete with 7 gears, 2 set of rods and penholders so you can create many variations. Different setups can be achieved instantly by simply picking different holes. Made of walnut, basswood, and solid brass and hand crafted in Portland, Oregon.
PrimoGraf Drawing Machine (Thanks, DugNorth!)
 


HOWTO spit

Posted: 13 Jan 2011 03:56 AM PST

I can't say as I've ever noticed a spitting problem in the bathroom at my office, but apparently it's gotten up someone's nose (or under someone's skin) enough to prompt this formal notice.

Expectoration etiquette

Kitten pile, Fes, Morocco (BB Flickr Pool)

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 10:11 PM PST

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A pile of kitteh in Fes, Morocco (فاس‎), contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Sam aka smfny.

Sluggo becomes a Beatnik

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 02:32 PM PST

Images 3236 2346922938 C1A1E10A1D Images Images Sluggothebeatnik Fc32 Nancypanel07
Nancy is my all-time favorite comic strip and I found these two panels online here and here. They're probably from the same strip, although maybe not sequential like this. I like them together though.


Opening credits to Enter The Void

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 02:11 PM PST


Get your eyeballs spanked by a typographical paddle in the opening credits to Gaspar Noé's "psychedelic melodrama" Enter The Void. (via @chris_carter_)

Sand Sledding at Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:47 PM PST

sand-sledding-5.jpg
Latitude: 36°37'8.33"N, Longitude: 117° 6'52.29"W

For those headed to Death Valley, the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are a fun location to go sand sledding. The Mesquite Flat Dunes are just northeast of Stovepipe Wells Village on Highway 190 in Death Valley National Park, California. To get there, drive about two miles east of the Stovepipe Wells ranger station, and a parking lot and a pit toilet is on the north side of the road. You'll see the dunes to the north and usually there'll be people walking out to the dunes.

After you've parked, it will take about a five minute walk to get to dunes, and up to half an hour to climb to the top of the highest sand peaks. The tallest and steepest slopes are suggested: although you can get going quite fast, this is slower than snow sledding.

A map to the location can be found here, and more information about the park is here.

More photos and a map after the jump.


sand-sledding-1.jpg


sand-sledding-2.jpg


sand-sledding-3.jpg


sand-sledding-4.jpg

Wikileaks volunteer detained and searched (again) by US agents

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 01:40 PM PST

Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher, Tor developer, and volunteer with Wikileaks, reported today on his Twitter feed that he was detained, searched, and questioned by the US Customs and Border Patrol agents at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on January 10, upon re-entering the US after a vacation in Iceland.

He experienced a similar incident last year at Newark airport.

An archive of his tweeted account from today follows.

• It's very frustrating that I have to put so much consideration into talking about the kind of harassment that I am subjected to in airports.

• I was detained, searched, and CPB did attempt to question me about the nature of my vacation upon landing in Seattle.

• The CPB specifically wanted laptops and cell phones and were visibly unhappy when they discovered nothing of the sort.

• I did however have a few USB thumb drives with a copy of the Bill of Rights encoded into the block device. They were unable to copy it.

• The forensic specialist (who was friendly) explained that EnCase and FTK, with a write-blocker inline were unable to see the Bill of Rights.



• I requested access my lawyer and was again denied. They stated I was I wasn't under arrest and so I was not able to contact my lawyer.

• The CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) agent was waiting for me at the exit gate. Remember when it was our family and loved ones?



• When I handed over my customs declaration form, the female agent was initially friendly. After pulling my record, she had a sour face.

• She attempted to trick me by putting words into my mouth. She marked my card with a large box with the number 1 inside, sent me on my way.

• While waiting for my baggage, I noticed the CBP agent watching me and of course after my bag arrived, I was "randomly" selected for search.

• Only US customs has random number generator worse than a mid-2007 Debian random number generator. Random? Hardly.

• During the search, I made it quite clear that I had no laptop and no cell phone. Only USB drives with the Bill of Rights.

• The CBP agent stated that I had posted on Twitter before my flight and that slip ended the debate about their random selection process.

• The CBP agents in Seattle were nicer than ones in Newark. None of them implied I would be raped in prison for the rest of my life this time.



• The CBP agent asked if the ACLU was really waiting. I confirmed the ACLU was waiting and they again denied me contact with legal help.

• All in all, the detainment was around thirty minutes long. They all seemed quite distressed that I had no computer and no phone.



• They were quite surprised to learn that Iceland had computers and that I didn't have to bring my own.

• There were of course the same lies and threats that I received last time. They even complemented me on work done regarding China and Iran.

• I think there's a major disconnect required to do that job and to also complement me on what they consider to be work against police states.

• While it's true that Communist China has never treated me as badly as CBP, I know this isn't true for everyone who travels to China.

• All in all, if you're going to be detained, searched, and harassed at the border in an extra-legal manner, I guess it's Seattle over Newark.

• It took a great deal of thought before I posted about my experience because it honestly appears to make things worse for me in the future.

• Even if it makes things worse for me, I refuse to be silent about state sponsored systematic detainment, searching, and harassment.



• In case it is not abundantly clear: I have not been arrested, nor charged with any crime, nor indicted in any way. Land of the free? Hardly.



• I'm only counting from the time that we opened my luggage until it was closed. The airport was basically empty when I left.

• It's funny that the forensics guy uses EnCase. As it, like CBP, apparently couldn't find a copy of the Bill of Rights I dd'ed into the disk.

• The forensics guy apparently enjoyed the photo with my homeboy Knuth and he was really quite kind. The forensics guy in Newark? Not so much.



• The CBP agent asked me for data - was I bringing data into the country? Where was all my data from the trip? Names, numbers, receipts, etc.

• The mental environment that this creates for traveling is intense. Nothing is assured, nothing is secure, and nothing provides escape.

• I resisted the temptation to give them a disk filled with /dev/random because I knew that reading them the Bill of Rights was enough hassle.



• I'm flying to Toronto, Canada for work on Sunday and back through Seattle again a few days later. Should be a joy to meet these guys again.

• All of this impacts my ability to work and takes a serious emotional toll on me. It's absolutely unacceptable.

• What happens if I take a device they can't image? They take it. What about the stuff they give back? Back doored? Who knows?

• Does it void a warranty if your government inserts a backdoor into your computer or phone? It certainly voids the trust I have in all of it.



• I dread US Customs more than I dreaded walking across the border from Turkey to Iraq in 2005. That's something worth noting.

• I will probably never feel safe about traveling internationally with a computer or phones again.


• None the less, safe or not, I won't stop working on Tor. Nor will I cease traveling. I will adapt and I will win. A hard road worth taking.

[first tweet in series / final tweet in series]

Death and digital ghosts

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 02:14 PM PST

Rob Walker, who profiled Boing Boing in Fast Company last month, wrote a fascinating story for the New York Times Magazine about ghosts in Cyberspace. What happens to your online identity and digital footprints after you die? I found the story to be provocative and quite moving, especially the parts about Mac Tonnies, a terrific blogger and Fortean/Science Fiction author who unexpectedly died in 2009 at the age of 34. I didn't know Mac personally but I feel connected to him through the posts he left behind. Rob is a great journalist who really manages to find the subtle threads of a story and to weave them together in a compelling and honest way that reveals his own curiosity. From the NYT:
Macstartimage The last entry on (Mac's blog) Posthuman Blues was titled "Tritptych #15," a set of three images with no text. The first comment to this post came from an anonymous reader, wondering why Tonnies had not updated the blog or tweeted for two days. Some similar comments followed, and then this: "Mac Tonnies passed away earlier in the week. Our condolences are with his family and friends in this time of grief." The author of that comment was also anonymous. After a rapid back-and-forth about whether this startling news was true and some details of the circumstances, that post's comment section transformed into a remarkable mix of tributes, grieving and commiseration. You can still read all this today, in a thread that runs to more than 250 comments...

"It was a very strange feeling," Dana Tonnies, Mac's mother, told me, describing how she and her husband became aware of the swirl of activity attaching to her son's online self. "I had no control over what was being said about him, almost immediately." Dana and Bob Tonnies were close to their only son — in fact they had coffee with him, in a regular Sunday ritual, the morning before he died — but they had little contact with his digital self. Sometimes he would show them his online writing, but he had to do so by literally putting his laptop in front of them. The Tonnies did not read blogs. In fact they did not own a computer...

Dana, who told me that her husband now teases her about how much time she spends sending and answering e-mail (a good bit of it coming from her son's online social circle), is presently going through Posthuman Blues, in order, from the beginning. "I still have a year to go," she says. Reading it has been "amazing," she continues — funny posts, personal posts, poetic posts, angry posts about the state of the world. I ask her if what she is reading seems like a different, or specifically narrow, version of her son. "Oh, no, it's him," she says. "I can hear him when I read it."

"Cyberspace When You're Dead" (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)



Syyn Labs's League of Extraordinary Nerds

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:12 PM PST


Chuck Salter of Fast Company profiled our friends at Syyn Labs in Los Angeles. They create whimsical machines and videos for OK GO, Google (like the one above), Disney and other clients.

feature-81-synn-3.jpg Syyn's first official project was to help build the complex series of chain reactions that performed simple tasks -- known as a Rube Goldberg machine after the legendary cartoonist who devised the concept -- at the heart of indie rock band OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" video. After it became a viral hit in the spring of 2010 (20 million views and counting on YouTube. Check it out -- again. I'll wait), corporate America came calling. Everyone from Google to Sears has tapped Syyn to build something that inspires wonder, gets their brand noticed, and is infused with the kind of unbridled joy that tends to get squashed out at most companies.

Syyn is discovering that the playfulness game can be a tough racket. Most clients just want what worked for the last guy, and [Adam] Sadowsky, Syyn's president and sole full-time employee, insists, "We're not a Rube Goldberg company." These guys can make a car-battery commercial beguiling, but it may take some beer and an all-nighter in the desert to do it. And clients like Sears ... well, that's not how Craftsman tools get made. Can these nerds transform their art collaborative into a true business without losing its mischievous, anarchic spirit? It would be their most audacious project yet.

(Photograph by Angela Boatwright)

Syyn Labs's League of Extraordinary Nerds



Critical (Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:06 PM PST

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A photograph contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by BB reader Camera John.

"In order to get this shot," he explains, "I set the die on 20 and used a hair dryer to push it out of frame, while using a long exposure. I had previously uploaded this shot, but have since edited it."

Nice work!

Seattle Stranger newspaper's "surveyor marks" cover

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:00 PM PST

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The cover for the latest issue of The Stranger was created by Dan Savage and Aaron Huffman.

Neurobiology of zombies and other movie science, coming soon to a theater near you

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:04 PM PST

I love it when cool, region-exclusive events expand to a wider audience. The Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston has a program called Science on Screen, which pairs movies with related lectures on the sciences. For instance, in this video from 2009, you can watch a Harvard psychologist talk about the neuroanatomy of zombies before a showing of Night of the Living Dead. Pretty fabulous. Now, thanks to a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Science on Screen series is going to expand to 6-8 other non-profit theaters nationwide. No word yet on which theaters will get the series, but I'll keep you updated.

The gaming messageboard postings of Jared Lee Loughner

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:54 AM PST

"Gaming appears to have been an important part of Arizona shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner's life." WSJ has more. In the 7th grade, he and a pal began playing the online action roleplaying games Starcraft and Diablo, then moved on to the text-based "Earth: 2025," now apparently called "Earth Empires." No surprises here: the postings he made to gaming messageboards are rapey, hatey, creepy.

Demo video: Monster Whatever Hotshop ad reel

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:51 AM PST


I'm fortunate that my day job lets me work with some of the most creative people on earth. This week I'm in Sao Paulo, Brazil working with the guys at Cubo.cc -- check out their demo reel! These are the folks who created the "Creepily lifelike CGI woman" that Cory posted about back in 2008.

HOWTO teach your small children to swordfight

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:35 AM PST


On Tor.com, writer and swordfighter Richard Fife meditates on the gentle art of teaching your small children to use a giant, bladed implement. That's my kind of parenting! My wife's a fencer and we've got a closet full of various cutlery from some foils to a claymore, and I'd love to see my kid grow up to inherit her mum's badassery.
My kids want to be trained in the sword. And you know what? From the moment I found out I was going to be a dad, one of the things I have always looked forward to is teaching them. With my eldest son having turned five this past year, I am starting to think about how to approach instructing him. After all, he has been begging me to teach him the blade for about as long as he could talk.

From the very first time he asked, I have promised him that I would teach him. But that promise always comes with me enforcing respect and understanding. Thanks to this consistency, my children can by rote say that a sword is not a toy and that hey are not to touch one unless I am there handing it to them. My sons have held dull daggers, but I only let them do so for a little while before I put the steel away and break out boffers.

Spec Fic Parenting: This, My Son, Is A Sword

(Image: boffer battle, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from qwrrty's photostream)

 


Payday lender association spoof site

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 11:16 AM PST

pla-spoof.jpg

Christopher Maag of Credit.com wrote about a spoof site called the Predatory Lending Association, which makes fun of those payday lenders that make big profits gouging the working poor.

The Predatory Lending Association offers tools including a "working poor finder," which places gun shops, liquor stores and pawn shops on the map and shows would-be investors in payday loan stores the best locations to open new locations. It also gives tips on finding for the most profitable races to discriminate against.

"It's easy to find the working poor," the predatory lenders site says, "but our studies reveal that a difference in location of even a few city blocks can impact profits by as much as 45%."

The PLA spoof was one of the first websites created by Front Seat, a Seattle-based company that usually makes web tools more earnest than snarky.

Payday Lender Spoof

Sarah Palin and Blood Libel: Doin' it Wrong

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:18 PM PST

sarah-palin.jpg
[Video Link, the referenced video became non-embeddable on the boingboing.net domain as of 11:50pm PT.]

I try to avoid blogging about Sarah Palin, for the same reasons I've tried to avoid blogging about Snooki and Paris Hilton, and feeding any number of garden variety internet trolls. Today, I will ask for your forgiveness, and break this rule.

Sarah Palin released a web video today in which she reads a speech off a teleprompter about "freedom" and the recent mass shooting in Arizona. In this speech, she reads the phrase "Journalists and pundints [sic] should not manufacture a blood libel."

ORLY?

So, here's what blood libel historically refers to:

1) [A notorious Bible verse, Matthew 27:25,] taken by Christians for centuries to indicate that the Jewish people as a whole and for perpetuity bore direct responsibility for the crucifixion and were therefore fair game for persecution and extermination.

2) A false accusation or claim that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays. Historically, these claims have-alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration-been a major theme in European persecution of Jews. The libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover.

NYT, religioustolerance.org, Guardian, Wikipedia.

Incidentally, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head on Saturday in Tucson and remains in critical condition in an Arizona hospital, is Jewish. She is, in fact, the first Jewish congresswoman to have ever been elected in Arizona. Her grandfather changed the family name from "Hornstein" to avoid anti-Semitism in an earlier era.

Looks like Palin's speechwriters picked up "blood libel" from Glenn Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal just a day before [UPDATE: Glenn's response is now here.] Glenn is no dummy, and is a friend of this blog, and should know better. Shame on all of you for not fact-checking, unless it is true that we "journalists and pundints [sic]" have been manufacturing the zombie Jew slaughter of innocent Christian babies and using their blood to bake delicious ZOG matzah. What is this I don't even.

Most importantly, "blood libel" and related anti-semitic slurs led directly to pogroms, and mass killings of Jewish people over generations. I don't suspect Reynolds would be so cold-blooded as to inject the term to pander to anti-semites and one-worlders, but I wouldn't put it past Palin's speechwriters.

Related reading:
• Jonah Goldberg in the National Review, on why this mis-use of the term is weird.
• USA Today on anti-semitic threats and Giffords
• Washington Post on the ADL's reaction
(Special thanks to Glenn Fleishman)

Will Elder documentary project on Kickstarter

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 10:09 AM PST


Harvey Kurtzman may have invented MAD, but for 99% of MAD's readers, it's the work of Will Elder that comes to mind when they think of the magazine.

Elder remained on good terms with Kurtzman -- a childhood friend -- after Kurtzman left MAD, and they continued to work together on various projects, such as Playboy's Little Annie Fanny and Goodman Beaver. But despite his immense talents as an artist and humorist, Elder always worked in the shadow of the charismatic Kurtzman.

That's why I'm excited to learn that Gary VandenBergh is making a documentary about Will Elder. He's seeking $3000 on Kickstarter to make it.

Chicken Fat is a feature length documentary about the legacy of MAD Magazine's seminal artist Will Elder. It is on it's way to being completed in 2011. We already have interviewed an impressive array of artists, writers, publishers and pop-culture experts which you can see by visiting www.ChickenFat.tv . Your donations will be used to complete our production interviews with Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner; American author, screenwriter and artist, Daniel Clowes; Film Director, Joe Dante and William Stout, one of the few artists who worked with Will on Playboy's Little Annie Fanny. To date this project has been funded using a generous grant from the Laurie Foundation and my own hard-earned cash! Once these interviews are complete we hit the edit room and plan to have a completed documentary by year's end. Any donation, no matter how small, is very much appreciated!
Here's a review I wrote of a book about Elder called The Mad Playboy of Art.

Kickstarter: Chicken Fat 2011



Ketchup dispensing mobile robot

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 09:14 AM PST


[Video Link] This little fellow's got spunk! (Via Superbeast. Thanks, Mike!)

Huckleberry Finn first edition illustrations

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 08:54 AM PST

huck-finn2.jpg If you liked today's hilarious Tom the Dancing Bug, made of repurposed illustrations of the first edition, check out the E.W. Kemble Wikipedia article I started, then treat yourself to more of Kemble's Illustrations for Huck Finn via University of Virginia. Shown here is Huck in drag. Kemble's work is possibly even more controversial than Twain's, as he became known for now-controversial depictions of African-Americans that rarely get seen today.

Tom the Dancing Bug: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Corrected to reflect modern sensibilities)

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 08:12 AM PST

http://www.boingboing.net/ttdb/ttdb20110112/teaser.jpg

Will The Guardian earn the ignominy of Robert Mugabe's gratitude?

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 07:24 AM PST

The Guardian has published an editorial by James Richardson accusing Wikileaks of endangering the life of Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. But there's a problem: It was in fact The Guardian itself that first published the diplomatic cable in question, which it had selected from a trove Wikileaks gave it access to.

Demon rug

Posted: 12 Jan 2011 12:10 AM PST
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